It will also quite clearly become a long document, filling several pages.
As is unique to the internet, this page can expand as readers show an interest in a particular area. So the bones which are here will get fleshed out slowly and in a manner which reflects the interest of you, the readers. For contact information, see the end of this set of pages.
4QD run our business on PipeDream, with surprisingly little help from other programs.
PipeDream is a program which evolved from a word processor, a spreadsheet and a database which were first released to run on the old BBC microprocessor. These three were View (the WP), Viewsheet (the spreadsheet) and ViewStore (the database).
Eventually a fourth program was released, View Professional - which combined some of the attributes of al three. It was however rather large and unwieldy for the existing hardware!
However, when the Sinclair XL was released, its main program was called PipeDream - an enhanced version of View Professional.
At around this time, Acorn released the first 32 bit Archimedes, and PipeDream was released for the Archimedes. This was on the late 1980s. Pipedream was visionary - a program well ahead of anything else available on any similar computer.
In due course, PipeDream was upgraded and enhanced, PipeDream 2, PipeDream 3 then PipeDream 4. It now stands at 4.5 - and hasn't needed to change much for many years.
This page is an explanation of how 4QD use PipeDream, and by explaining this we shall give you an idea of the sort of things PipeDream can do.
4QD is a manufacturing business - but we also sell our products world wide to users both small and large scale. So we not only require the paperwork and systems of a volume electronics manufacturer, but we also need the point-of-sale systems of an exporting mail order retail business.
PipeDream does the lot!
As I use PipeDream so extensively for the business, it will come as little surprise that I also use it a lot for other private uses, and I will finish this treatise with some notes on how useful it can be for other things.
Mostly, I shall try and make this page interesting to people who know nothing of the program concerned, so there will be screen shots of PipeDream in action. However, for those who have PipeDream there will also be some example files.
Don't bother with these unless you use RISC OS and have a copy of PipeDream - you cannot run them on a standard Micro$oft Windows PC!
This link should cause your browser to display the contents of the examples directory.
In this text, names of example files will be coloured red
Any manufacturing industry has to keep careful track of its manufacturing components. This involves a parts database giving sourcing and pricing information, and parts lists giving item by item parts inventory for every sub assembly. The main parts database is in PipeDream of course. It is in spreadsheet format, one component to a line as the following screen shot shows.
The screen shot shows a typical parts list.
The file names of these lists are:
Any mail order business uses lots of labels but there is a problem: order muster information, with customer paperwork and label is normally raised singly, one set per order. Printing labels singly can be a problem as labels come on sheets, so many labels to an A4 sheet.
Our solution to this problem is to use 4 label sheets (one A4 sheet has 4 labels) and to cut the sheets in half to give A6 sheets, 2 labels to a sheet. An A5 sheet is easily handled by a laser printer, can be printed twice by the same software simply selecting the half sheet to be printed by inserting the A5 sheet with the 'live' label in first, so the software doesn't know whether the second half of the sheet is used or not.
Some people will be concerned about cutting a sheet on half: it has to be done reasonably carefully or odd whiskers if cur label can come unglued during printing and can wrap themselves round the laser drum. How much attention you have to pay to that depends on the design of the laser and on how good you are at cleaning the drum. We feed lots of labels through and do not have many problems.
The picture shows the label on screen: The heading is actually an inserted drawfile and the text is looked up on a work-sheet. The yellow bits are protected slots, writen by the work-sheet.
Several variations on this theme occur: one for the current sale, one for service returns, one for general correspondence. Then we have a similar system for printing an address straigh onto a white A5 envelope.
We use two programs - PipeDream and Prophet. Doing essentially the same work in two different programs may seem like its adding a lot of extra work. Indeed, it clearly does involve some extra work. However each program has its plusses and is better for different aspects, so the dual program system does give more flexibility. Data transfer from one to the other is quite simple so the extra work involved is not a lot.
Where the dual entry system does save a lot of time is in checking the data. I'll not go into too lengthy an explanation now, but one instance is that in PD, we keep a log of bank transactions as they are initiated. When the statement arrives, I manually re-sort these into statement order, so reconciling PD against the bank statement is very simple.
We also enter bank transactions into Prophet. But it's a pain sorting into bank statement order in Prophet, so we simply mark as reconciled, and re-date any un-presented payments so they will 'date sort' to after the statement date.
In Prophet, we enter a blank 'bank ledger' entry at the statement date. That way each statement in Prophet should tie up exactly with the PD statemented date entry, but the dated log of the bank is in PD.
It seems like a lot of duplication, but it greatly speeds the finding of any discrepancies! Aa always, keeping two records as a double check is very helpful.
More information on this will follow in due course.
This page's URL: http://www.4qd.co.uk/ro/pd4/bus/01.html
For queries and conversation on PipeDream the program used to run this system join and then write to the PipeDream mailing list.